Tag Archives: strategies

Webinar Overview – YouTube in the Classroom

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Introduction

Our recent recorded Edublogs webinar was a fantastic session presented by Bill Genereux (@billgx on Twitter). Bill is an Assistant Professor of Computer Systems Technology at Kansas State University at Salina. He is currently working towards his PhD in curriculum and instruction. In the webinar Bill presented his research about YouTube, carried out recently when taking Dr. Michael Wesch’s Digital Ethnography class

The Session

This was a very interactive session both on audio and in text, with Bill showing a series of video clips to illustrate the outcomes of his research and to stimulate questions and discussion. He set the scene with a short introductory clip about the project.

Next came a look, from the student perspective, at student boredom in school and the activities undertaken to try and alleviate these feelings. This was followed by the scary side of the coin – secret recordings with hidden cameras! To finish Bill moved on to take a look at educators taking video in the classroom as a matter of course and using YouTube to publish these.

Conclusion

This was a terrific session with Bill’s video clips providing a great focus for discussion throughout. As I almost always find myself saying the overview is just that! It provides a “taste”, for the full flavour check out the recording.

Bill’s excellent preparation and pre-loading of the videos into the Elluminate Multimedia library meant that the whole session flowed really smoothly. I have been in sessions as a participant in the past where video has been used without great success and so was a bit apprehensive. This was a first for me in the use of video clips in a ssession where I was in a Moderator role and was (in my opinion) a great success. I feel that this was largely due to two things: a) the fact that Bill and I got together in an Elluminate room in advance and learned together what would work and what would not; b) Bill’s expertise and experience in working with video which enabled him to very quickly determine the best alternative for achieving his objectives for the session.

Just to finish up, my apologies for the delay in posting about this webinar. I was swept up into the fantastic 48 hour Reform Symposium Conference (#rscon10) of which more in a later post.

Next Webinar

SerendipitybsmallOur next Webinar is an Edublogs Serendipity – unconference session so bring along your hot topics and burning issues (what makes you spit with anger or thump a tub with passion) and throw them into the melting pot for the poll to choose our topic in the first ten minutes.

Join us on Thursday Aug 5th at 23:00 GMT/UTC (7pm USA EST, Midnight BST) or Friday Aug 6th at 1am CEST,7am West Aus, 9am NSW, depending on your timezone – in the usual Elluminate room

Serendipity webinar overview – Connections made!

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Introduction

As with a session a few weeks ago I was laid low by a migraine and find myself writing an overview for a session I didn’t attend – as I said at the time recordings are a wonderful thing! My overview is written from listening to the recording but really this is one you need to hear for yourself.

The Session

The two suggested topics of: 21st Century Skills in the elementary classroom; and getting started with blogging in an education context seemed to merge quite easily into one.  This was a very relaxed conversation in a small group discussing ideas and where each person is currently with their students. It developed into planning the basis of a future classroom collaboration between participants.

Conclusion

This was a fantastic example of Serendipity in action! A group of people looking for similar outcomes and actually starting to develop their classroom collaboration in the session.

Next Week

TechieSmallOur next Webinar is an Edublogs “Fine Focus” session a “Techie How To” – “Layering with GIMP!” an interactive session in which we invite you to explore using layers with the GIMP. This is for those who want a rather more sophisticated (but still free) image editor than Photofiltre (our topic a couple of weeks ago) .

Join us on Thursday July 15th at 23:00 GMT/UTC (7pm USA EST, Midnight BST) or Friday July 16th at 1am CEST,7am West Aus, 9am NSW, depending on your timezone – in the usual Elluminate room

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Webinar Overview – Introducing Scratch

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Intro

Check out the recording for this  “Techie How To” session by guest presenter Carl Bogardus (on Twitter as @weemooseus) who showed us how he uses Scratch with students to develop a variety of visual and interactive projects and how this can help students with maths and logic as well as developing basic programming skills.

The session

Carl did an excellent job against all the odds – technical issues with audio and uploading slides meant that he presented the session “off the top of his head”. We started with a look at the Scratch

Scratch

homepage and Carl told us a little about how the site works. He then “played” a project developed by one of his former students to show us the sorts of things that can be done. Next Carl showed us how simply the program blocks can be put together, modified and then instantly tested.  As an illustration of how he uses Scratch to develop maths and logic skills Carl built a very small program to move a sprite by inviting suggestions from the group about how to achieve particular effects and then implementing these so that we could see if we were right! The session finished with questions.

Conclusion

Many thanks to Carl for providing a great introduction to an application that could, in my opinion, be useful for developing engaging learning resources as well as for students themselves to use in developing their own skills

Next Webinar

SerendipitybsmallOur next Webinar is an Edublogs Serendipity – unconference session so bring along your hot topics and burning issues (what makes you spit with anger or thump a tub with passion) and throw them into the melting pot for the poll to choose our topic in the first ten minutes.

Join us on Thursday June 24th at 23:00 GMT/UTC (7pm USA EST, Midnight BST) or Friday June 25th at 1am CEST,7am West Aus, 9am NSW, depending on your timezone – in the usual Elluminate room

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Serendipity Webinar Overview – Maths anxiety and other matters!

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Introduction

This week’s overview is a strange experience for me! I wasn’t there in the session (I was laid low by a migraine) but am still writing an overview. I can do this thanks, of course, to the recording, technology is a wonderful thing!

The Session

It was one of those Serendipity sessions that happen occasionally where we don’t have many participants and so it is much more of a chat than a formal session. For me one of the strangest and most frustrating aspects of only being a spectator after the event was that I so much wanted to join the conversation!

The discussion was mainly around issues of anxiety in teaching and learning maths with digressions into wider considerations of teaching and the need for teachers to be learners as well as teachers and to work across learning disciplines. Again the discussion turned as so often to motivating and empowering colleagues as well as students. The question of teacher burnout and the balance between the risk of stalenes/boredom and being overwhelmed by the workload was also raised.

Conclusion

For me as a listener after the event this was a very thought provoking discussion and one where I was longing to take part. Because this was so much a “conversation” the discussion was almost entirely through audio with some text chat and for me it was a session well worth listening to.

Next Week

TechieSmallOur next Webinar is an Edublogs “Fine Focus!” session a “Techie How To” on getting the most out of Elluminate Webinars from the participant’s point of view in “Be an ‘Elluminated’ participant“. If you would like to know more about the tools and options available to you when you attend an Elluminate session, or about how you as a participant can help the session flow more smoothly then this session is for you!

Join us on Thursday June 3rd at 23:00 GMT/UTC (7pm USA EST, Midnight BST) or Friday June 4th at 1am CEST,7am West Aus, 9am NSW, depending on your timezone – in the usual Elluminate room

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Webinar Overview – Motivating the Unmotivated Learner

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Introduction

The recorded Edublogs webinar of the 20th/21st of May was a fantastic session led by guest presenter Lynne Oakvik of the Learning Resources and Instructional Media Department, Broward County Public Schools, Florida.

I really enjoyed this session for the content and activities but also because I was able to participate more in text chat than is often possible while Lynne led the session ably supported by Phil Hart.

The Session

After the usual preliminaries and some introductory words from Lynne she took us straight to the heart of the matter by asking us to brainstorm the factors influencing student motivation. We had a very full whiteboard very quickly!

Impactson Motivation

This first activity set the scene for a lively and well paced session. We moved on to look briefly at some of the possible overarching institutional strategies for supporting unmotivated (at risk) students. Next we shared individual strategies we had used with students. This again produced a well filled whiteboard as well as a busy chat stream. Lynne then summed up by showing, and asking for our input on, the outcomes from a report suggesting items that might be fundamental to keeping at risk students in education,

Conclusion

All in all this was a very interactive and thought provoking session and our thanks go to Lynne for giving us all such food for thought in such an effective way. As with most of these sessions this overview is no more than a fleeting glimpse and you will get much more from the recording.

Next week

SerendipitybsmallOur next Webinar is an Edublogs Serendipity – unconference session so bring along your hot topics and burning issues (what makes you spit with anger or thump a tub with passion) and throw them into the melting pot for the poll to choose our topic in the first ten minutes.

Join us on Thursday May 27th at 23:00 GMT/UTC (7pm USA EST, Midnight BST) or Friday May 28th at 1am CEST,7am West Aus, 9am NSW, depending on your timezone – in the usual Elluminate room

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Serendipity – Non-Tech Teaching of Tech Topics

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The topic chosen in Edublogs Serendipity Webinar this week was “Teaching technical subjects in a non-technical way”. This generated a really interesting discussion with many great ideas expressed in text, on the whiteboard and over audio, Catch up with the recording for all the details – the Wordle below gives a flavour of the discussion.

TeachInNonTechieWay

TechieSmallOur next Webinar is an Edublogs “Techie How To!” session “Add-on Value to Firefox” by guest presenter Shelly Terrell, Shelly (technology teacher, trainer and social media consultant) will explore some of her most valued Firefox add-ons.

Join us on Thursday February 25th at 23:00 GMT (6pm USA EST, Midnight CET) or Friday February 26th at 7am West Aus, 10am NSW, depending on your timezone – in the usual Elluminate room.

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